Special K

In 2006 I was going to Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. I wanted to be a journalist and my MCC teacher said that SIU was the best place to go for the money. I should have probably gone to Columbia in Chicago but it was about $10,000 more. Anyway, there were tons of kids from Chicago proper who went SIU. One of them was my friend Marge. She was in love with Obama. She was a community activist who was positive that the world was out to get minorities. She was half Mexican and half German which apparently made he a minority. So when one of the Illinois Senate seat came open she knew that she had to fight for a Chicagoan.

The two candidates were as elitist as you could get. The Republican was a man names Jack Ryan he was a rich lawyer who had quit his evil ways to become a teacher at a prestigious catholic school in the city. His opponent was a Harvard educated, multi-ethnic black civic leader who had decided that his was his last shot at the brass ring. But like everyone said in the early years of his political career there was just something about him. There was just something about him that made you trust him. Believing in him for reasons is slightly beyond the norm. May it’s because he often has a look on his face that says “it’s going to be alright”. And it’s not your day or our year but every thing he seemed to say in his eyes I’m going to fix it all of it. I’m going to make it good again.

During the campaign Jack’s ex-wife said he was a big perv in their divorce papers. She ruined his campaign and the funny part is that she didn’t even mean to. They’re apparently buds now. But it seemingly crushed his chances of winning. But suburban republicans would not be denied. Chicago suburban republicans are a breed of human not themselves. The majority of them are car dealers. That’s the best way to think of them of them as people who want nothing more than people to keep spending money. They like immigrants working for them but not have equal rights and they would prefer a don’t ask don’t tell policy on the entire homosexual community of the planet.

They hate taxes because they then can’t afford to build their game room in the basement. They like the status quo to keep them from having to think about other people. They could not, and would not be undone by one meager sex scandal. So in their brilliance they sent Alan Keyes, conservative radio talk show host, from Maryland, to take Jack’s place. Not realizing that would motivate voters all over the city to vote for Barack people. No one knew that much about Barack but at the same time they knew enough about Alan Keyes to know that they didn’t want him.

But even though the race was sewn up Obama still wanted to visit the whole state before the election. And that’s how I met him. He had some to the DNC outpost in Carbondale to cheer the troops as it were. My friend demanded we go, mostly because I had a car and she didn’t. So we parked got out and went into a house tat was just this side of a shack. People were all over it like ants on a Popsicle milling this way and that waiting for him to arrive.

Then the buzz intensified. I was standing out on the porch, because that was the only place left with any room. Then I saw what I thought maybe a tree moving towards the door. He was insanely tall, like a tree with the ability to speak and attend law school. His head was also larger than aver but it wasn’t overwhelming. He was as this as a rail. Not in malnourished kind of way but in a I could eat 2 pizzas every day for my entire life and never gain a pound type of thin. His smile seemed to take over his whole face. Like it was straining to be released and infect others with its good will.

I was out on the porch so I was one of the first to meet him. He smiled and shook my hand, asked me my major and took a photo with me. Then walked inside, he gave a cheerleading speech about how even though he was going to crush Keyes it was still a great that everybody was pushing ahead of him. After a half and hour, he came in, he rushed out. As we left we were high on the excitement of the event. We went to Burger King and they almost asked us to leave.

I highly doubt we would have gotten the same excitement from meeting Dick Durbin. He was something beyond the ordinary and at that moment, I knew someday, he was going to be president.

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